heroes among a thousand
by Nerumi H
Summary: "And did you save them?" "If you begin to die, I'll tell you." /A nurse, a soldier, a war, and further wordless understandings.


**.title.: **heroes among a thousand

**.summary.: **"If you begin to die, I'll tell you." /A nurse, a soldier, a war, and further wordless understandings.

**.characters.: **Elsa/Hans, Rapunzel/Eugene, a bonus dead Jack Frost, references to the Arendelle family

**.warnings.: **just blood really.

**.a/n.: **Prompt on my tumblr. Note that no sides were established, I'm not commenting on the war, blah blah blah. Also shhhhh about war rules. SHHHH

Important : soldiers had tags (that could often be broken in half) that held their personal info on them like name and blood type. Often if a soldier died, their tag would be split and taken back, if the body couldn't be moved safely.

I hate to be this person but...a month of my time...fifteen minutes of yours... Comments would be appreciated.

**X**

They drag him in on an early morning, clothes as red as the paint slashed on city walls by men too young to understand their cause. Although she doesn't know it then, circumstance and morality will soon turn to her to be relied on, and eventually destroy.

(Something she hates. The reason she isn't like her sister, a sister Elsa found sawing at her strawberry blonde waves and swearing, _swearing_ she'd follow (her boyfriend Kristoff) (her father) (her beloved country) (her precious older sister) into war.)

Elsa had been clinical and just the right amount of caring, enough to keep at arm's length, wondering, sneering, why they dropped him here. He'd been shot in rainfall, shrapnel like carving shavings trussed up in blood that grows sticky when they scatter over the table. This equipment is massively sub-par, not having enough time to transport all the proper tools in the snap-judgment decision put towards picking up Elsa's station in the city, transporting her across the dead zone that had become the countryside, and closer to the lines of battle than she would have liked. Of course shipments were to be expected tomorrow. Of course this man could be dead. Blood drips off the lip of the table and patters onto her shoes.

She watches the empty contours of his face blur between the line of living and death, and it is with blind hands that she tethers him to her side.

When he is stabilized, his blood a situation of stupid, stupid guesswork as he comes with no tags (Rapunzel does not suspect and Elsa learns from her to keep her worries shut down – "He's wearing our uniform, and even if he wasn't, who are we to deny help?"), Rapunzel sits beside him and washes him clean. Blood runs down his arm – swabbed from the creasing in his elbow, arch in his wrist, and his hands, which she lies open on her lap; his fingers curl unconsciously in the way carnivorous plants relax after a capture.

At the end of it all, Rapunzel (her assistant, her boss, her better half cut at birth only leaving one girl with any semblance of affection for the other and one with timid respect) puts order to the operating table while Elsa retracts and searches through the thrown-apart clothing for ID. From the coat, Elsa unwinds a knotted, bronze tag – from it, she reads, _Fitzherbert, Eugene F._

She clutches the metal.

That is not Eugene. She knows – her eyes dart involuntarily to where Rapunzel washes dirt off the unnamed soldier's jaw, then back just as quickly. Eugene is Rapunzel's fiancé.

Elsa's heart stammers, and she stuffs the tag down the front of her dress.

**X**

The first indecent sound out of him is a drawn-out, pathetic groan, and it will soon be the last.

He wakes up with the sun, while she's already bustling with mail. Shipments of equipment are to come later. This is personal. This is rushed, curly script and personal – her mother. She is vague, as if she doesn't remember how Elsa reacts to that.

She turns. The sun is bleeding through the fabric of the tent, just out of reach from touching him, drained freckled skin a wary glow in the dim. His hair looks strikingly dark like this, deep russet and a mess; green eyes flash onto hers like they've known this trajectory all along.

"Good morning," he says, voice languid with exhaustion.

"Good morning," she responds in a third of the time it took him to say the same. The letters are tucked into a small book in a bag at her hip, and she immediately wishes for Rapunzel's presence, but it's likely that the girl is still asleep. She's as early a riser as needed in war, but she wasn't raised like Elsa. She doesn't walk as straight, speak as curt, or worry as hard. "How do you feel?"

"Where am I?"

She doesn't mind his avoidance of the question. She'd only said it to busy the atmosphere – she has methods of answering her own question much faster by herself. She sweeps up to his side, breaks away any filter for decency, and shifts up the blanket to check on his leg. (One.)

He's bled through the bandage, and she is cautious to inspect. He hisses in surprise, "Christ – "

"You can guess where you are." Shot through the low thigh, an angry mix of colour in pungent candle wax. "Infirmary; the exact location only matters when they can release you."

There are no shadows her way, but she can sense him leaning up to see what she is seeing. The nameless soldier emits no exclamation, gasp, groan, nothing. His other knee does draw up a fraction, though, as if to check it holds no invisible injuries of its own.

"Can I have a name?" he asks slowly when she pulls a cart towards her, sitting beside him.

Five in the morning and blood already stains her fingers. Elsa replies, "I'm supposing your father has already given you one."

"I mean yours." He says it with a chuckle that feels misplaced. She disposes of the wrap, and swiftly cuts another, tracing the railroad tracks of stitches with her eyes…that's the work of Rapunzel: tight sewing, as if all she mends is fabric like she did back home. Speaking of Rapunzel, Elsa would rather fetch her than answer his question. He doesn't get a monopoly on being mysterious.

"My name doesn't matter," Elsa replies. "I'm wondering about yours. I know you are not Eugene Fitzherbert."

For a moment, he goes quiet. She risks a look up, and his green eyes have drifted long past her, freckles spilled into the base of his neck rolling when he swallows. Her eyes are on the expression long enough to decipher it before he has stolen it back and smirks. "Avoiding my questions? Are you here illegally, pretending to be saving the enemy soldier while you stitch grenades into me?"

"I'm sure you'd notice if I did." She is careful when lifting his leg to circle the fabric underneath.

But he seems to finally decide to participate, perhaps realizing it is not out of curiosity that she asks this, but out of necessity, and says, "Westergard, Hans."

Out of affection for Rapunzel, she is nearly deaf to that name and instead feels a louder, fiercer question rise to her lips – _where is Eugene_ – but rethinks it at the last moment, tag invisible in its warmth against her chest.

She says, "Thank you."

**X**

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

"Of course you're asking _that_."

"Meaning?"

"Do you think we could just forget something that lands us like…this?"

"Don't speak to me like that. I am not blindfolded when I accept patients. It'll take more to earn my pity; I've seen men much worse than you."

"And did you save them?"

She snaps a line of thread between her teeth, while inside, her ribs seem too tight. "If you begin to die, I'll tell you."

**X**

Another soldier arrives two days after Hans, and it is not the fact that he is carried like a god that tips her off that he will not survive. She can just feel it. She can feel it pouring down her back, cold and prickling into capillaries and marrow and bouncing back out so her fingers feel too stiff.

His name is Overland, Jackson. Hans comforts in way of saying that it isn't her fault, but she has become very, very good at locking her feelings into tiny metal safes with impossible codes and flame-proof guards and electricity that whips upon her insides when she gets too close, so how can he pretend to know what she feels?

Jackson was a boy too young to be here, a shot through the spine; she imagines he collapsed in a forwards arc, and in her mind that fall never ends, curling in upon himself, surrounded by dark blue sea instead of muddy, bullet-pelted earth. He'd hit the water with a splash, white froth like a bubble bath or candy floss, and when his head would break the surface he would take the deepest breath he's ever breathed.

She helps Rapunzel pull the sheet over his face. He was from a camp not her own, but the tag feels as warm as Flynn's does, though this one stays proudly in her hand.

Rapunzel volunteers to speak to those who brought Jackson in (volunteers without even asking Elsa, everyone knows she'd rather keep her mouth shut), and when she vanishes Hans muses, touching the wound on his hip idly (two), "How do you feel?"

The ghost of the cold grip upon her back flexes. "Fine."

His green eyes graze over her. Something about it unnerves her; it's the same chill. "I imagine we can all get used to it; death. I remember it was frightening at first, when all I could see was the blood or how unnatural it looks when someone falls. There's no comparison for it, when we used to all seem to think men were filled with nothing. But after a few, the physical loses its horror; and it's not disgust or fear that plagues me anymore."

She puts Overland, Jackson's tag down onto the table so she won't cut her twisting fingers on it. The night is dark in this storm: men are raised weapons, squinting through the torrent, where everything is a cycle of dripping, overflowing pools with sharp waves, and with a head too low under the water you cannot hear or see a thing. An aged, ginger-haired man wading through trenches of blood, coldness blurring his movements into a paralysed stumble – when he falls it is harder, the pain confused and unbearable, a current throttling under the sea –

Hans says, "It's watching their faces. Strange, how it doesn't feel like part of their body anymore."

Elsa wipes her hands on a towel to rid the blood.

"It was like that with Flynn. Eugene, I mean… He always wanted us to call him Flynn."

One of the safes sets aflame for a moment.

**X**

"You'll have to accept my apology. I was rude when we met."

"I've gotten over it."

"I haven't."

"No need to be a gentleman. I understand. You'd been shot, and removed prematurely from the field."

"I'd lost a friend, also."

"…I know."

"So, do you accept my apology?"

She runs her fingers over the report held before her. Thigh. Just above his hip, blasting apart bone. Clip along his shoulder (three). He is annoying, just out of view, the persistent glare of the sun. And she says, "Elsa."

He does not hesitate, as if he'd been expecting this impromptu admission. "Elsa. A lovely name. Foreign?"

"It's only Elsa."

"I owe you more than an apology, Elsa."

She can feel his gaze, thin like spider webs, against her brow. "A thank you would suffice."

"Then thank you for everything."

**X**

There is no evidence of him getting any better. Elsa lets Rapunzel do most of the work – she knows more, she isn't a medical traitor under guise and rushed education like Elsa is. But despite all of this and the hand-that-feeds-you theory Elsa has long built and founded her avoidance by, Hans holds a certain interest in her.

And, almost frighteningly, Elsa doesn't entirely mind it. When she can ignore the fact that he is bedridden, colour draining from his face through every conversation but his voice still determinedly alive, he is a brief respite from all that is.

He looks like her father, can slip up on his words like her sister, and listens in a way she finds herself admiring. The way he says her name is like a cautious beginning, flooding the word so full of presence, more than she has ever wanted for herself. He makes the word hang in the atmosphere. Perennial. A soft interjection in the middle of the sentence, a surprise where her name doesn't belong, and he forces her back into existence, and reality, where she is removed from her anxiety and no longer a vase for other people's concerns where her own forces it all to overflow.

He smiles like it always renders him breathless to be with her.

**X**

Rapunzel sits very close, women crammed into the curtained-off back room; not exactly concealed, but it's a belief that he is dozing and a pointedly humming radio that comforts the two about the secrecy of their conversation.

"The deliveries are late… I haven't heard from anyone at _all_ about this," Rapunzel is saying, pointing out the calendar. "But if we don't get any medication soon…"

"He's going to be in trouble."

Rapunzel nods slowly, her lips tugging shyly upwards. "He already is."

An awkward silence settles, in which Elsa thinks momentarily of that infection in his side blooming like thick, algae-discoloured clouds, up his ribs, deep under the surface where it would glow like a filthy mirror; then, her, covering his face with a clean, white sheet. But right before her fingers let go – she cannot see his flesh anymore, but she knows, she knows that ginger hair no longer belongs to Hans, but someone who shares her silence, smile of her sister.

Elsa closes her eyes, and her hand reflexively tenses over the tag she still conceals – with it brings a haze of guilt that grinds her teeth and makes her wish for a second never to open her eyes again.

Rapunzel brings her in slowly for a hug. The tiny girl is gentle, and more than ever Elsa thinks that Eugene will never hug her again, and she him, and she's letting them both pretend that they will. Elsa does not hug back.

Hours later, Elsa stands unwillingly beside Hans. He's sitting up, crooked, legs off the side of the bed, like he'd been pacing again. He does that. He shouldn't. His gaze is combing through one of the few books she'd brought with her; he had sped through it, openly volunteering to discuss it with her. A day ago she would have been looking forwards in the vague, dull way that she only can, but not anymore, with a thousand weights upon her, with shifting faces and a stench of fear rotting inside.

"I'm being rude," he says, and begins to curve the top corner of the page, then glances at her in asking. She nods without knowing she is. He folds it down and closes the book, regarding her with measure.

She knows she's being paranoid, but she hovers on that look for too long, not so much cherishing his acuteness as pretending she has the wish to do so.

"Elsa, are you alright?"

People ask her that too much, often, she feels, to make things easier for himself, but he doesn't have anything to gain from her being pleasant if she isn't to care for him. Elsa forcibly opens her hands to properly grip the clipboard, properly speak. "We have not received our expected shipments of supplies. Rapunzel and I, we've decided we will try to continue the best we can with the equipment we have, but we're expecting problems when it comes to sanitation or availability, so we can't spend so much on you. In case of other admissions."

As if suddenly very aware of his own burdens, Hans shifts, eyes never leaving hers.

Elsa presses the bottom of her clipboard into her stomach. "Your shoulder was never any concern, and is healing fine. Your leg, however; we've long ago decided that it's cut too close to your knee to try anything drastic until you could be transported to an actual hospital, but it seems we are losing that chance."

He opens his mouth to speak but she tramples over him: "The shot given to the side, however – it has begun to infect, and without proper equipment, we don't think we can stop it. It is in too sensitive an area, cutting very close to your kidney, which we believe will fail first."

She finally stops, throat a bit dry. He looks away, eyes pausing on his hand, which he just barely flexes as if understanding that at least that is here.

Elsa comments, "You have hidden the pain well."

He tilts back his head, sun catching on his skin. Stares at the ceiling for a long time. And then Hans says, again, far too knowingly, far too kind, suddenly she does not stand feet away but it's as if she's pressed up against him and he whispers in her ear, "Elsa, are you alright?"

"Yes." She locks her pen onto the papers. "It's only a job."

He lowers his chin. "Don't worry about me."

"I will not."

His thin lips pull into a smirk. "If I die, it won't be here."

"That is what we all wish for."

The smirk morphs into a tepid smile, his eyelashes drifting shadow down his cheeks as he glances off, and she holds a wandering flicker of thought that comments on how he perhaps isn't as sure of himself as he pretends. He picks up the book, then holds it out.

She doesn't understand why she aims to take it, but as soon as her hand closes upon it he snaps his fingers over hers, a movement far too fast for the gentleness they emit in the final milliseconds, leading her down towards him. She follows. A book between them but his thumb still brushes hers on one side, every finger crossed over hers on the other, and with the unwavering tide of his gaze she feels, again, much closer than she is.

He whispers, "Elsa, you may act like you feel nothing, but please be careful. Internalizing all of this will destroy you, and I don't think this is your ideal place to die, either."

Elsa carefully removes her hand from his. He doesn't move, as if willing her to listen by this intimidation, one she'd sooner see being used in the face of someone he's insisting not to feel, not the opposite.

She turns, with the flicker of what is maybe a nod, maybe the last tug of his line forcing her to look at him. There is nowhere to leave.

And then he says carefully at her back, "So… did the other soldiers survive?"

She whispers, the words torn from her: "No."

She decides there are too many people here for her to care about, and she has too little heart to support all the affection her minds cruelly concocts.

**X**

"Hey!"

He turns on a heel, the effort stammering. His hand flashes out to hold the table. He's standing again.

"I can't – " Elsa is glaring, huffy, and hurriedly trots to him, crossing the tent in seconds. "I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?"

Her hand hovers an inch from the tabletop. It's their pseudo-front desk, topped with pens and an empty space under a pile of books where a thin, basic medical book had been mindlessly tucked.

It's in his hand instead.

Hans lets her look at his little crime, shameless; no _chance_ that he just does not understand what he's doing. The back of her neck is going oddly cold, the sensation creeping up her scalp – she tightens her jaw when he suddenly holds the book out.

The smile is calm, amiable. She tries not to seem desperate when she takes it back.

"I was only bored," he explains. "I don't have company like you."

"I don't have company, I have refuge from these stupid antics of yours." Elsa does not release the book until it presses securely against the table, not about to fly away. She hates it. Why did she leave it out? She didn't bookmark anything, did she? Nothing to do with him – Rapunzel knew what she was doing. This book may as well have been from Anna's homemade babysitting course. "You have to rest."

"I apologize," he says, grossly sincere. His fingers suddenly brush her wrist, and in a way as habitual as it is for him to not listen to these simple instructions, her hand jumps back.

"It's fine, I suppose."

She makes to lead him back the short ways to the cot, and manages so much as to let her palm hover inches from his arm, soft fabric of his cheap replacement clothes flittering on her skin when he obeys. Three heavily limping steps and she drops her hand. She thinks again of what she said two days ago: he hides the pain well. Perhaps he is used to blindly making his way through it. Through it, for stupid things like books and rifling where he shouldn't be rifling.

He does collapse a little bit when they finally make it there, to her credit. But then, head still angled down as he searches for a secure place to plant his hands, Hans says, "I surprised you."

"That isn't exactly something to be proud of."

"Ah, but it is. You stuttered and everything."

She'd been planning on helping straighten out the blankets but decides to refuse him that. He involuntarily hisses when moving, but it is through a kindred, falsely understanding smile.

"You don't emote very well, Elsa."

Another flicker, an angry flash of ember. The name holds on his tongue. It sounds acidic, but in a manner and direction she cannot identify, like dissipated smoke on the air.

"You're strict, down to the way you compose your thoughts. I have a lot of time to think, you know…" He eases off his side, sitting crooked as usual. "It seems to me that it was too long you were taught by your mother."

She returns, "And seems to me that it was too long that you were at the breast of yours."

He laughs, and it is full, and she lets it fall through her with a little less urgency than before.

**X**

Every time she hears movement outside the camp, she is terrified that the face she will see will be familiar.

The tousled blonde of the invincible Kristoff, imposing no more, a shadow of the boy who so often showed up at the doorstep, unabashedly muddy, his enormous dog at his side, more often than not asking for Anna with a look so sheepish it did not fit his stature but was right at home on the boyishness of his face.

Her father who stood confident, a gaze befitting presidency but it was as easy to make him laugh as it was a child; any despair could be reflected in his face with an objective brightness, a strategy, a comforting word. At her side when she could do nothing but cry, listening when all had grown tired of her perennial misery that even she could not navigate for herself.

Anna – who could be _anywhere_, either in her mother's arms or leaving the woman behind to sob alone in fear. Her beautiful little sister, diamond smiles and a warmth Elsa could not understand but wished to cradle. A sister whom Elsa wished so much for that Elsa sometimes dared not touch her for fear of destroying her. Anna who could find her in that darkness, laugh at the compass and the map, and grab her hands, warm fingers and a kiss against her cheek, and lead her faster to the sunlight than anyone, so fast that Elsa believed that Anna was the light, herself. Anna, whom Elsa would happily die for.

(she wishes to when she thinks things like this)

Anna could be anywhere, playing hero, tiny in uniform, a pet of the army, lost; looking out for her family and Kristoff and probably everyone, _everyone_ else in the entire world because she loved so much but had no idea how much she could suffer because of it –

Anna, knowing Elsa had been relocated –

She doesn't realize she's left her bed until a voice breaks through the dark.

"Elsa."

Her hand drops off the curtain. He does not sound angry.

"You can't leave; calm down."

They are miles from any battleground, but those are miles too far away when she wants to step within them with her stuffed journal and trembling hands to search the face of every body lying in the dirt for one she knows.

Elsa moves into the room. No lanterns are lit, only the timid, slight moon dripping down the walls.

"Elsa."

She is unable to hide anymore.

"Please talk to me."

She has no idea what he wants her to say. She feels as if opening her mouth would free a torrent of tears, but she knows herself better than that. "Hello."

He chuckles softly. "Can't you sleep?"

She has a demented thought of them in a child's sleepover, him hanging his head upside down from the upper bunk, until abruptly it is not him but it is Anna, stubby braids like clock hands, blue eyes twinkling in the dark.

"Not well," she replies. Not anymore.

"I can't either. Can I admit something?"

"Of course."

"I'm thinking of what you told me earlier. I'm thinking of it too much - my eyes stay shut for too long, and then I can feel the disease eating at my skin."

"Would you prefer I not have told you?"

"If you'd done that, when I _did_ notice it I would have been angry at you. I don't want to be. You've done nothing to earn my anger."

"You haven't known me long enough."

He hums it off. He shifts, a quiet yawn, but every other noise around him is crisp and alert. She can feel him watching her.

"What's worrying you?"

The tent door twitches open with the wind; in could duck a blonde with his head blasted in, an aging man dragging his bleeding corpse behind him, a tiny girl with tears splashing down her face.

Elsa shakes her head. "It's nothing."

"Come here; do you mind?"

And for this moment, she doesn't. She crosses past the door, giving it a lingering look (outside it is only stars that shine), then sits on a stool beside him. It's completely dark; she doesn't know if he lies looking at her or away or not at all.

As soon as that muse is complete she must retract it - he speaks, but even if she were blind and delirious she'd know for absolute certain now that he is looking at her.

"Elsa. What is torturing you?"

And then he is touching her hair, a strangely accurate aim for the amount of light. A thumb along her temple, her hair like rivulets of water under his hands.

She has long grown used to hearing her name in pleads, but never like this. Never grounded, and somehow it is the selfless, undemanding way of it, words vanishing under the shadow under the enunciation of her name, that convinces her to speak. "…My family is in this war. My father, my sister's boyfriend, their friends... I worry for my sister herself, if she's taken a post like me. I worry for all of them."

He exhales, breath against her forehead. "You're wondering if they've died."

She says nothing for a long time. And then, "I imagine it."

He tucks her hair behind an ear. "Stop thinking about it. Soon the only way you will remember them at all is dead."

"How do you stop..." She cannot think of a strong enough word for it. Instinct - nature - every single fibre of her existence is dedicated to being scared. How do you stop a damaged curse?

He lets go of her, slow, as if acclimating the both of them to distance. The full silence replaces the word she's unable to grasp, an imprinted echo upon the fabric that shadows them both.

Finally, he says, "Can I admit something else?"

She doesn't say anything, but he takes it as an affirmation.

"…You might think me intrusive." And for once, his words are uncertain, picking through each other with unceremonious unease, though they hover smooth in the air. "I know I can't stay here with you forever, whether because I die in this way, as embarrassing as it is," awkward laugh, like the first time he asked for her name, "or because I have to go back. I don't want to leave you behind like this."

She can feel him moving around in the dark, like shockwaves under water.

"I don't want to leave you behind at all."

She presses her mouth tight shut for a beat, pulling the bag closer to her, corners of her book pressing into her hips. "You've been without a woman for too long. That's all this is."

"This has nothing to even do with war."

"War is all I am," she says crisply, false humour.

"Why are you so stubborn to not believe me?"

"You're still – " She catches herself from proceeding, runs out of words, and just as fast regrets stopping. He gathers up the slack, voice sounding lethargic, though not in the way of annoyance.

"I'm sorry."

"All right." (She wishes she could have said something, slapped him, laughed. Tiny boy falling for the woman with his life in her unsteady hands. Ha, ha, ha.)

"I really am."

"Okay." (She believes it. He's apologizing as much as she does.)

They both settle in the silence, Elsa feeling herself melt back into the chair, no less rigid. They've lost ends and beginnings in the thick dark; she can feel the way he moves. The catch of moonlight on his hair when he calmly pushes it back is a shard upon her skin.

He whispers, "There was…a point to all that."

Her tongue darts along her lips. "To distract me? You succeeded."

"No. I wanted you to believe me when I say this: I want to do something for you, when I _do_ leave. I can't relieve you from this post, bring you to France with a fully paid apartment…"

A laugh trips past her lips.

He pauses to let that sound carry on the air. She listens with a strange distance as it fades, like the tail end of sparklers in the night, obscurely rough in the velvet.

And he concludes softly, "Maybe I can find your father for you."

She snaps her head away, yet she feels as if they're everywhere, pieces scattered in the dark and inescapable. She brings the bag higher on her lap. With shadows still playing behind her eyes, part of her feels an inexhaustible need to open it, half of her cannot risk what it will bring.

"…You would?" She's conscious of how breathless it is.

"I want to help you. Sometimes I can't be bothered to ask for names, but if you tell me, I'll do so. They let us send mail, and it wouldn't really be leaving you."

"…Arendelle. My last name is Arendelle. He is high in rank, you should be able to tell." Her hand jumps up to her braid, suddenly alight with a glittery nervousness that trembles her veins. "And Bjorgman is the name of my sister's boyfriend – …"

"And I'll look for your sister herself."

"Please." She's nearly gasping, suddenly overwhelmed, as if she herself is underwater with the rest of them, no longer trapped. The silhouettes glow and no one is writhing. No one is drowning. The constantly dark corners of her vision blur with glimpses of light, white and cut with her lashes. Her sister cannot take the map from her this time, but he has given her a promise which salves and terrifies her, fingers locked into the lantern around his wrist, the glass on her compass cracking.

His knuckles brush hers, tentative and asking, carving permission through the dark. And to her shock, her hand opens, and lets his palm slide against hers. Rough and hewn, fingers curling into the scars hidden between her tendons.

She's long been scared of optimism, and crushes her eyes shut. He's softly reeling her in again, a patient whirlpool under her feet, and the shadows of the men miles away and brave fade into glowing hues, reminding her in a gentle sway of her and Anna, tissue paper over flashlights, making shadows dance across the walls in rainbows and rainfall. She can't trust him with all of this. One man cannot fix this crumbling dam in her head, nor bring any words that will mend it forever. But impermanence can be enough.

Elsa hisses, "I promised to leave her behind, alone, knowing nothing. I…do things I don't want to for Anna."

She feels the way she does when he says her name, and he eases her forwards until her forehead finds his shoulder. The sea is frighteningly quiet.

**X**

The next morning, he is gone.

She can't remember falling asleep, whether next to him or alone or floating in the middle of nowhere, but it is to Rapunzel's frenzied shaking of her that she wakes. A blur follows the women to the tiny yard around the tent, where the horizon spreads red and silver like a warm blade, and there is no one as far as their eyes can see.

In her sacred bag, she finds a short note, written on scrap paper from her clipboard. She feels for a hysterical moment like a woman waking up from a night of blackout drinking, but instead of bite marks and a hangover she only finds a goodbye and blood across the tent door.

Rapunzel begins shallowly, "He wasn't…"

Healed. Safe. Sane. She wonders if he left out of an urgency for her, if she'd infected him.

She wants to go home.

Rapunzel tentatively touches at her arm. They stand like that, ashamed and confused for a tiny eternity, until Elsa finds the strength to slip Eugene's tag, the girl's own little piece of home, into Rapunzel's hand.

Hans has left a silence behind, one of insufferable weight that barely registers the sound of Rapunzel collapsing. Elsa secures shut the door and prepares to wait.

**X**

It's as if the base hears Rapunzel's agony, for in no less than a week they arrive with a cloud of dust, bobbing guns, and careless greetings. They ask for entry. Rapunzel grants it for them, while Elsa shrinks behind the book Hans has relentlessly dog-eared. She's feeling bitter immediately, and has long run out of energy to properly shut it down. They should have been here weeks ago. Shiny new needles, acidly sweet potions, whatever they hide.

One soldier gathers Rapunzel next to where Elsa sits and begins to speak.

Forcing politeness, Elsa shuts the book (she does not fold her own page), and tries hard to listen. It's as if there is a panel in her brain, lit up with all the power of a lightning storm to listen to every word and inflection he offers – there could be something of a vagabond, traitorous female soldier, or merciful freedom given to an old man – but she feels like the thunderclouds are trapped in a snow globe. Small, echoing, making little sense. The rest of her head is filled with the fog that Hans's promise has settled on her. One that frightens her at the same time it forces her into ease, like blinders on a carriage horse.

All she knows is that in an instant, Rapunzel is tugging her to her feet, and they're packing up. Hans's bloody sheets are thrown to the dirt in their rush. Her journal, stuffed with photos and letters, is kept close to her, while they rattle across the countryside. Swept up in the wind again like leaves. Conversation sways around her, secretive talk of traitors, talk of men, talk of spies.

Outside, it is finally sunny.

**X**

"Elsa?"

The woman looks up, in brief interest segmented from the calm man beneath her instruments, and finds Rapunzel, a thick letter offered to her.

This location is far busier, with traffic flowing heavy and often dire, but they know Elsa's education and roots, and give her the easy fixes. The tiny pauses between missions. She smiles at Rapunzel and the brunette sets the letter down gently on a nearby table.

She doesn't ask who it's from – her heart is stammering with a speed that frightens her, makes her skull feel too close, drumming against the secure packages of emotion, as frayed as they are from that night weeks ago with Hans.

She finishes up quickly, washes her hands, and snatches the letter and some privacy.

It is marked with no name – not even initials, and from that, her list of possible visitors dwindle to two. Both can tell her similar things. Her hands are difficult to steady when she tears open the paper.

Pacing herself, she ignores the slight bulge at the bottom of the envelope, and instead slides out a letter, folded perfectly straight. If that precision isn't indication enough, the unrecognisable script lets Elsa know that this is not from Anna. She's unable to stop her gaze from jumping to the bottom of the paper, where it cuts off too soon, and his name is a single word, brief in ink and the way it settles in her heart, thankful, dare she say elated, tentative. Like he did to her, breathing his name past her lips forces him into a very real existence, present but not as close as when it was pitch black between them.

She reads.

_"I'm happy to be writing to you sooner than I'd expected. I have to apologise in advance, and hope you accept it even if I'm not there to say it personally; though you've given me the impression that you understand the value in words more than others do, and I don't have to be there to put on the usual show for you to hear me completely._

_Firstly, I apologize for vanishing. I'm not usually so theatrical, but if I was to attempt an escape during the day, I'm sure your colleague would have done no less than restrained me there with any equipment she could get. I'm paying for my actions, now, but I promise that between you and I there is both a trail of blood and self-pity, and a very able hospital. You have to understand that it was imperative that I leave. My first duty is not with my own health. It's with the military. You understand that, I'm sure._

_Secondly, I apologize for filching your personal documents. It wasn't for long, but it was long enough. I mean, to a lesser extent, the medical tutorial (I always did expect you weren't trained). Mostly I refer to your journal. It was empty of your writing, disappointingly, and I only wonder where you keep all your thoughts if not there and if not in ritual communication. But there were photographs (your sister is beautiful). You see, I couldn't expect to find them only with a name. I didn't expect to walk out of the trenches and instigate roll call. Don't worry; I left them all there, in safe condition._

_Thirdly, I apologize, perhaps, more to myself than to you, for never saying things properly, and also for having to say those things in the first place. Feigning infatuation with a nurse is truly novel, and I don't even think you fell for it. I feel trivial. I can admit, you are anything but._

_Fourth. Fourth is a bit of a silence, because I don't apologize for this. I've tried. But as I said with the Overland boy, I recognise death more so from the feeling, the eclipsing fade. In that case, it should have been easier to close my eyes, and feign the affection you had unwittingly tried so hard to infect me with. I am sorry to say I kept my eyes open the whole time. I watched it all, and thanks to you, it was with unmatchable triumph._

_I still think a lot. I think now, that according to you, I'm the only man to have been brought back to life under your hand._

_Shame that exhaustible power and vulnerability was wasted on me._

_I find myself unable to stop writing this, and imagine how you will feel when you read it. Wait, I seem to have found my real fourth apology._

_I'm sorry for not being there. How nice this would be to say in person._

- _Hans."_

She shifts the letter in her fingers, ginger movement crackling all throughout the parchment like trapped, beating wings of insects. Left open to dry, shaken of dust and grass, folded each pleat with perfect single attempts. She imagines Hans writing this. She blinks and the gaze is suddenly not hers, but his, in jubilance, blood trickling under his nails.

Her fingers take a long minute to grasp the gift in the envelope.

It is a pair of tags, torn from the other half with a warped, pale metal. They read:

_Arendelle, Akthar._

_Bjorgman, Kristoff._

Everything inside her explodes.

The din is so forceful that all it manages to do is throw her over her knees, curl her like rigid death; the amount of pain renders her numb, lost with no assuring, no way to say she's fine – she's fine _– she's fine – _

"I'm so sorry! I'm – I didn't know, I didn't realize…"

"Here she is. Where – "

"Elsa!"

Rapunzel grabs her hands. It feels as if it is happening in a fleeting sensory memory, losing a little more with every shock, trying to count heartbeats in a thunderstorm. She has seized, and the metal clutches onto her just as tightly.

"I'm sorry, Elsa – I, I thought he was…I thought, too…"

Her ears resonate with the mutterings of the soldiers on her way here. Spies. He'd come with no tags, no name, and she was stupid enough to throw herself to his feet, throw down her own family.

She'd told him _everything_ –

Something fissures within Elsa, slamming through her, shrapnel pinning against the underside of her skin. Carvings from the tiny safes, splitting apart as what has so long rested inside screams. Somehow none of their blades feel as terrible as being unable to make herself concentrate – clearly remember, spinning in fury as deeply as she is blinded under agony –

She can hear his voice instead in her head. Licorice dark, bitter, warm. He'd held the lantern before her, walking backwards, white light like an angel. He'd dodged and set her benevolent traps. But there was an end. She'd sworn on an end, unwilling to admit it to herself.

She chokes on tears she forgets how to hold, on the recoil of inflamed fury towards him. Her hands feel cold, and she misses, stronger than ever, the feeling of her sister's tiny hands in hers, glowing like she holds Elsa's light, coursing through her veins but never out of reach.

She hisses unconsciously, but with shots of venom strong and caught in her teeth, _explosive_, "He told me he was Hans Westergard."

_("You don't emote very well, Elsa.")_

She hopes he is terrified when she does.


End file.
